—I couldn’t sleep at all last night, he told me.
We hugged, then sat down to watch our shows.
Mr. Brenneman had a wisdom that stemmed from his Jewish roots. One day he said:
—The people we truly love either leave or die.
And another morning:
—Love that dog as much as she loves you. I see her eyes when she looks at you; those are human eyes.
And another time:
—When I die, I want to go to the paradise of the Jews. I love you very much. In you, God has granted me one last child.
It was Mr. Brenneman who really saved me in America. Perhaps the whole purpose of my trip was to bring us together. He laughed when I said that in a country where everyone jogged and ate cereal, he was the only one who drank coffee and smoked cigars.
—Love, he told me. Love everything from the grass to the first person who walks by in the street. Love it all. That’s the only thing that can make life not just bearable, but beautiful. Me… I’ve loved a lot in my day.
The days passed, more and more dreamlike. By now I went to John’s house only to sleep.
The day came when I was to return home. I went over to Mr. Brenneman’s with Lyn and my suitcase. He was standing at the front door in his suit.
—The trip was worth it, I told him.
—I’ll miss you, he answered. My last child is leaving.
We corresponded for years. I never really got to know America, but America introducedme to Mr. Brenneman. One day my letter came back unopened. Mr. Brenneman had died. And with his death, America vanished altogether from my mind, as if I had never gone.
When I got home, I accepted Alkis’s proposal of marriage. He was furious.
—But as soon as I proposed, you went all the way across the Atlantic!
—Do you want to get married or not? I asked him.
—I do. His eyes filled with tears. I’ll suffer a lot with you, he added.
—Yes, I said. A lot.
39.
Vanessa was British. And a lesbian. I met her at a party thrown by a British veterinarian, a colleague of Alkis’s. She was very tall and so fat that when I first saw her, I thought an enormous tree had uprooted itself and was marching toward me, like in Macbeth when the whole forest charges the castle.
That evening I was wearing a black dress with a high neckline and a back that was open almost to the waist.
—That’s a beautiful dress.
I heard a deep voice behind me and thought it was a man. Turning around, I saw a gigantic woman studying me through a gold monocle.
—My name is Vanessa Prévoit.
—I’m Alkis’s wife.
—I know. I asked about you. I was struck by the way you smoke so many different brands of cigarettes. All night I’ve been watching as you smoke brand after brand. It even occurred to me that your handbag might have a false bottom. That’s a Dunhill, if I’m not mistaken.
—Yes, that’s right. They’re my favorite. I smoke all the other brands around the Dunhills, if you know what I mean. When I finally have the incredible pleasure of lighting one by chance, just from rummaging around in my bag, I know it’s a Dunhill right away, from the taste and smell. Usually at events like this I hide in the bathroom and smoke it alone, in peace.
—Wonderful! Wonderful! said Vanessa, rubbing her hands together. I think the two of us will be great friends. I, too, am… how shall I say? A little excentrique… in dress, and in other things, too.
I looked at her. She was wearing a huge black velvet hat with a feather and a ruby brooch in the shape of a tiger. The eyes of the tiger were two glittering green emeralds.
—Your eyes look like the eyes of the tiger on my hat, said Vanessa.
—I like your brooch, I replied.
—So do I. I bought it in Venice one Christmas, to cheer myself up.
—You must have been very sad, to buy such an expensive brooch.
—Yes, I was. It’s been years now, but in Venice, I was left by someone I adored. We parted ways in the Piazza San Marco, in the rain. To console myself, I went to Rome and shopped all day, crying the whole time.
—You loved him that much?
Vanessa’s smile was enigmatic.
—Yes, she answered.
A few months later, after we had started spending a lot of time together, Vanessa told me that the man who had left her in Venice was really a woman. Her name was Esmeralda.
The night I met her, Vanessa was wearing a long black cashmere dress with billowing sleeves. She was always gesturing with her hands, so her sleeves kept hitting me in the face as we spoke. She looked like a gigantic black butterfly, and her hat with its feather reminded me of Porthos from The Three Musketeers. She was wearing lots of expensive jewelry. But the jewels seemed to lose something of their shine on her, because there was nothing the least bit feminine about Vanessa.
As we left the reception she leaned over and whispered in my ear:
—My dress is by Kenzo.
I’ll never forget how Vanessa looked the night I met her. With her black hat and her short, curly red hair, her huge dress, her tortoise-shell cigarette holder and gold monocle, she made all the other women at the reception seem badly dressed and ordinary.
We began spending a lot of time together. At first Alkis wasn’t jealous, since the two of us would make fun of Vanessa behind her back, and besides, he knew I wasn’t attracted to women.
But the first time he asked me, “Isn’t Vanessa extraordinarily ugly?” I knew he’d begun to be jealous.
Perhaps it was because I had started to avoid talking about her. I no longer told him where we went, as I had when I’d first become friends with her. And then a friend of Alkis’s told him how he’d seen us dancing at a disco, barefoot and crazed.
By now I saw Vanessa every day. She would pick me up in her black Jaguar and we’d drive for hours, listening to music. In the evenings she would take me to expensive restaurants, and then we usually ended up in some disco where we would dance until dawn.
Vanessa always walked in front and I followed behind. It made me feel as if there were an enormous umbrella sheltering me. Whenever we went out to eat Vanessa would sail into the restaurant like a frigate, and I would scamper in after her, microscopically small. We’d sit down at a table. I would toss our packs of cigarettes onto the tablecloth. We would drink, smoke, eat, and above all talk, sometimes until morning.
What drew me to Vanessa was her exuberance, which was as oversized as her dresses. Actually, everything about her was huge. Her purse looked like a suitcase. Her clothes flapped in the streets, brushing against passersby. Her enormous hats split the air like the sails of a ship.
She always wore tennis shoes with her expensive dresses, but handmade ones, custom designed for her. She had a pair dyed to match every dress she owned; she must have had a hundred pair.
She was also extremely generous. She would leave tips bigger than our bills. And she bought me expensive gifts almost every day—clothes, furs, jewelry, or sometimes just a cheap barrette. “This’ll look beautiful in your blond hair,” she’d say. But when she gave me a TV and a VCR she had ordered from London especially for me, the latest designs on the market—then, for the first time, Alkis got angry.
—I have no intention of watching TV and movies on gifts from Vanessa.
Suddenly he raised his voice, which he did only rarely.
—Enough! he said. I’ve had it! If you like Vanessa so much, why don’t you go and live with her? You know, I haven’t seen you in a month. At night when I come home from the office, I’m tired and hungry. The house is a mess, with presents from Vanessa scattered everywhere—yesterday I found a fur in my study. And the fridge is always empty, so every night I go out and eat junk food. I’ve gained ten kilos from all the pizza and sausage pies. And so far I’ve put up with it all. But to watch the news on Vanessa’s TV—that’s going too far!
—Fine, Alkis, I told him. Don’t you see that Vanessa is just my fr
iend, that you’re jealous of her the same way you’re jealous of anyone who gets too close to me? Fine, Alkis, I’ll go and stay with her. Besides, I need a vacation, a vacation from you.
That night as I packed my bags Alkis sat beside me, smoking a cigarillo. There were tears in his eyes.
—Don’t go, he begged me. Don’t leave me again, darling. You can see Vanessa as much as you like, it doesn’t bother me, I like her, too. And I know that, deep down, you’re as pure and innocent as a dove. My lovely little dove, please don’t leave. Whatever you want you can have here, too, with me, we can share it. You’re always leaving. Please stop leaving, it kills me every time.
I didn’t answer. I carried my bags to the door and called for a taxi.
It was Christmas. I’d been living with Vanessa since September. We had decided to spend New Year’s in Italy.
—It’s the most beautiful season, she told me. Have you ever seen Venice in the cold and rain? After that we’ll go to Perugia, to Assisi, where St. Francis was born, and we’ll end up in Rome.
Vanessa bought me new Vuitton suitcases. They were lined with brown silk printed with tiny black flowers. She also bought all sorts of creams to protect my face from the cold. I liked one of them in particular, because of its name: Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion.
Our flight was to leave the next morning at six. That night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I thought of Alkis. For a moment I missed him, yearned for him. Then I fell asleep.
First stop: Venice. It was freezing, six degrees below zero. And it wasn’t raining, as Vanessa had promised. The moisture from the sea seeped into my bones, making me dizzy. We checked into a luxury hotel, the Danieli, Vanessa sweeping in first, I scampering in after her.
A man at the reception desk took our passports.
—Si, si, Signora Prévoit, he said. La camera matrimoniale… Si, si. Va bene, Signora Prévoit.
He turned to me and winked. I felt strangely embarrassed, without knowing why.
—Bella donna, the man said to Vanessa, looking at me. Molto bella… Then he smiled. É una bambola, he added, looking now at Vanessa.
The hotel was next to the La Fenice opera house, where La Traviata was playing.
Our room had a fridge full of soda and pink champagne. A big basket of exotic fruit sat on the table.
There was only one bed.
—But I asked for a room of my own, I said to Vanessa.
—There weren’t any, she answered hurriedly, staring at her shoes. And the bed is so big, you won’t even know I’m there.
Vanessa looked at me.
—Does it bother you so much to sleep in the same bed as me?
I spent the whole night in an armchair. I couldn’t sleep, I was plagued by a persistent worry: did Antonio, the man at the reception desk, think I was a lesbian, too? The thought bothered me so much that by six in the morning I couldn’t stand it anymore. I got dressed and went down to the lobby. Antonio was behind the desk, snoring.
The walls and floor of the lobby were swathed in red velvet. There were potted palms and yucca plants in the corners, and little ivory tables.
Antonio woke up. I didn’t know a word of Italian, and he didn’t speak anything else.
—Antonio, I said, mio marito is waiting for me at home, he knows I’m traveling with Vanessa. I’ll be calling him in a little while, he’s expecting me to call at eight.
Antonio smiled and lit a cigarette.
—Signorina, why are you telling me this? It’s none of my business. Besides…
He broke into laughter.
—Io, signora, sono un… gay! Capisci? Io amo Angelo. Ma, Angelo cattivo, cattivo!
Antonio took a deep drag from his cigarette, stubbed it out and immediately lit another. He was on the verge of tears.
—Io, non gay, Antonio, capisci? I said. Io, amo…
I’d forgotten the Italian word for what I wanted to say.
—Io, amo… Men!
—Si, signora… Si… To gay or not to gay… Che importanza? Il sex é uno oggetto misterioso… Signora Vanessa é molto generosa… É molto chic… Vuole un cafe espresso?
We drank our coffee and watched the sun lighting up the palazzi.
—Venezia… Antonio said. É molto bella…
—Si… I answered.
—Cattivo Angelo… Cattivo… Antonio kept whispering.
I went back up to our camera matrimoniale.
—Where were you? Vanessa asked.
—Down with Antonio, at the reception desk. We drank an espresso.
For the first time, my tone of voice was hostile.
—Don’t talk to strangers, she told me. We have a lot of money with us, and Italians are shameless thieves. What did you and Antonio talk about, anyway?
—He told me he was gay.
I looked Vanessa straight in the eye.
—And he’s convinced I’m a lesbian.
—Does that bother you? Vanessa asked.
—Yes!
—And why did he think that?
—Because I’m with you.
We left the hotel that morning at ten. The temperature was the usual six below, but now a strong wind had come up, too, making the cold almost unbearable.
Vanessa was wearing a black velvet cape, a green hat and high green boots. She hit a passerby with her cape, nearly knocking him to the ground. I was wearing tennis shoes and before long I was freezing. My feet were completely soaked. I took off my socks and wrung them out into the Grand Canal.
Vanessa put on her monocle and opened the guide book.
—Today we’ll go to the Gallerie dell’Accademia. It’s got an exquisite painting by Giorgione.
Vanessa started walking and I followed her, shivering. We climbed into a motoscafo. A fat Italian woman gave us a vicious look, then whispered something to her friend. They laughed. I tucked my scarf over my chest. I was cold.
At the museum Vanessa started telling me when each painter had been born, reading so loudly from her book that a crowd gathered around us, thinking she was the museum guide. The real guide, an Italian with white hair and a moustache, had gone off to complain to the guards.
I stopped short before a painting: Giorgione’s La Tempesta.
I felt my breath stop and my legs start to tremble. I stared at the painting. Everything around me disappeared.
In a mysterious landscape, a thunderstorm is about to break. A woman, naked from the waist down and with one breast exposed, is holding a baby in her arms as if about to nurse it. Opposite her, at the other edge of the painting, against a background of foliage, a man in breeches and a red waistcoat stands watching her. She’s looking off, somewhere else. The man is carrying a staff. There is a sweet sense of anticipation—perhaps of approaching rain. There is a silence, a calm. The two figures have finally arrived at their destination, after ages of wandering and pain.
The landscape is shady, full of green trees and white clouds with curves as round as a woman’s breasts.
Water gushes from a spring. Or perhaps it’s a river.
I closed my eyes.
I forgot all about Vanessa, and Venice, and Alkis.
A sweet euphoria washed over me, though something like a premonition sat heavy on my chest.
I pictured myself in a similar landscape. But I was alone: the man in the painting had disappeared.
I was lying in the shade of a large green tree. A spring gushed beside me.
I put my hand into the crystalline water.
In this complete silence, I fell asleep.
Much later, I seemed to wake from a dream.
I heard Vanessa’s voice coming from far away, like an echo.
—Here, you see, in this painting, the woman doesn’t want the man to see her naked, that’s why she’s hiding her breast with the baby’s head. She despises him. And he’s looking at her so hopelessly because he knows she’ll never be his. The low clouds, the storm that’s about to break, all signal some approaching catastrophe. That’s why t
he painting is called La Tempesta.
Vanessa drew close to me, practically gluing her chest to my back, then bent and whispered in my ear:
—Deep down, women don’t really want men, they just don’t know it. Men saddle women with children, and women don’t want children. They want to be free, but they don’t dare even consider it. Men always make them suffer. In pregnancy, in childbirth—and then once the babies are born the men no longer desire the women. They lock them up in the house with all those howling babies, the pacifiers and the loneliness.
And the women paint their nails red again and again, watching soaps on daytime TV, while inside them stirs this need to escape, to escape from the man.
Meanwhile, the man goes out every morning to interact with the people around him. He constructs the world, changing it to suit his needs and desires.
And in the evening when he comes home, dinner is ready and warm on the table, the babies are sleeping and his wife is freshly showered. She’s even dabbed perfume behind her ears and on her wrists, since those are the first places he’ll kiss that night in bed.
But as time passes, she paints her nails deeper and deeper shades of red, and stops watching her shows on TV. She leaves the house and walks through the city, enjoying the way other men look at her, strangers. Later, she goes out only for herself—the gazes of men no longer interest her.
She paints her nails, washes her hair every day, wanders through the city, smokes in the streets, goes window-shopping, maybe ducks into a bookstore to buy a book she’ll never read, just for the pleasure of seeing it wrapped up in a package. She sits down at some café, and now, finally, she’s the one who looks at the men. And when she starts looking at men she is finally free and invulnerable, because she’s finally obtained a gaze, her own gaze, the one her husband stole from her when he locked her up in the house, hiding the outside world from her, the cities and streets, the shops, the other gazes.
By now Vanessa was stroking my neck.
—And once the woman is free from the man, she continued, she seeks out some other woman. Because only another woman can understand her, only a woman will let her be free to travel with her body and her mind, will open up the world to her, instead of hiding it the way a man would. Only a woman will let her finally be a woman, and not just the object of masculine desires.
Rien Ne Va Plus Page 6
